laserbit.net

The biggest project in the US Department of Energy’s first round of Advanced Research Projects Agency energy (ARPA-E) grants announced three years ago could pay off in a big way for the laser industry. Foro Energy (Littleton, CO and Houston, TX) has demonstrated that 20 kW of laser power delivered through a special optical fiber can drill through hard rock. “We have completed proof-of-concept testing, and are now developing field-deployable hardware,” says Foro chief technical officer Mark Zediker. He foresees applications in geothermal energy and production of oil and natural gas.

In 2009, ARPA-E gave Foro a $9.14 million grant to develop a “low-contact” drilling technology to aid development of geothermal energy, which often must be extracted from very hard volcanic rocks. The agency’s goal was to reduce drilling costs by up to a factor of 10, helping to make carbon-free geothermal energy competitive with fossil-fuel energy generation. With private funding, Foro is studying the same technology for oil and gas production